dence, sustained by untiring industry, is reduced, in some of us, to the sad necessity of asking charity, cap in hand, at the corners of the streets, of the poorest of the passers by!"

This lamentable picture, in which there is much exaggeration, as in all the harangues of demagogues, ancient and modern,-over artisans dying of hunger in the very centre of a nation wallowing in wealth, brought to my mind the naked Romans, who, by the mouth of Gracchus, complained that after so many provinces had been conquered by the republic, they had not a span of earth wherein to lay their bones.

"E voi Romani!

Voi che carchi di ferro a dura morte

Per la patria la vita ognor ponete

Voi signori del mondo, altro nel mondo

Non possedete, (perchè tor non puossi,)
Che l'aria e il raggio delle luce. Erranti
Per le campagne e di fame cadenti
Pietosa e mesta compagnia vi famo
Le squalli de consorti, e i nudi figli
Che domandano pane!”

" And ye, O Romans!
Ye who with steel encumber'd, to grim Death
Your lives expose each day for country-sake,-
Ye masters of the world,-who of the world
Possess but that which can't be ta'en away,
The air and light of heav'n-roaming the fields,
Till iron-hearted hunger pulls ye down—
Ye have, to bear ye fitting company,

Your wretched wives, and naked, famish'd offspring
Crying for bread!"

Monti, Caius Gracchus, Act 3.

It would seem that empires are like men, who resemble each other in their virtues and their faults.

Some English political economists, who pay attention more to the wealth than the happiness of a country, observe, in reply

to these complaints, that if it be true that these classes do not live comfortably, it is quite as true that without steam-engines they could not live at all. It is certain that Arkwright, by the invention of cottonspinning machinery in 1765, and Watt, by the application of steam to it in 1779, gave their country a decisive superiority over the industry of other nations, although at the same time they deteriorated the condition of perhaps a million of mechanics and gave rise to a production much greater than the demand: without these two wonderful discoveries, England would most likely have lost her superiority in manufactures, on account of the high rate of wages, which is partly an effect of the high price of food.

If, then, some workmen, as I have already observed, injure their health in the spinning

H

factories, there are many more who destroy themselves from an immoderate desire for

gin, which induces them to labour harder than a due regard to their health would allow. Adam Smith, in his great work, observed, that, where prices are high, workmen are always found more diligent, active, and expert, than where they are low; in England, for example, more than in Scotland; in the neighbourhood of great cities, more than in remote parts of the country. Some men, indeed, when they can earn in four days enough to maintain themselves all the week, choose to remain idle on the other three. This, however, does not happen with the largest portion. On the contrary, the industrious, when they are liberally paid, in ready money, are generally disposed to labour excessively, and so undermine their health, and ruin

"It is

their constitution in a few years. calculated," says Smith, "that a London carpenter does not continue in his full vigour more than eight years." It is nearly the same with some other trades, in which it is the custom to pay the workman directly his work is finished, and even with farm-labour, when the wages are higher than usual. I have endeavoured to procure, but could not succeed, the book which the Italian physician Ramuzzini wrote, in the last century, especially on the peculiar diseases produced by excessive application to one particular species of labour.